I checked my phone; James still hadn’t been in touch. Hopefully, my rapid and aggressive barrage of text messages let him know I wasn’t the fool he thought I was. It was clearly a mistake ever contacting him, and he was obviously a fraudster who knew nothing about Harry’s death other than what Poppy had already told him in her sessions. It was very uncharacteristic of me, but I decided to let it go and make my way back to Manchester. I couldn’t bear to be stuck in this sleepy seaside town any longer. I yearned for the noise of the city, where I would be able to drown out my own thoughts, if anything else. Filey couldn’t be any quieter if you placed the whole town in a vacuum, and it made my skin crawl.
I stumbled down the guesthouse stairs; they creaked and splintered as I took each step. Like most of the guesthouses in Filey, it was operated by an adorable old couple who had been inexplicably married for over a hundred years. They’d moved to Filey to live out their retirement dream. Joan, the woman who ran the ironically named ‘Coastal Bliss’ guesthouse, seemed to be glued to the front desk at all times. She really was a lovely woman who couldn’t do enough for her guests. Whenever Harry and I visited Filey together, we would always stay here rather than at his childhood home. He said it was for my benefit, but in reality, I don’t think he ever wanted to stay at his mum’s house either—too many bad memories.
“Morning, Joan. I’m checking out,” I hoarsely announced.
“It’s been a pleasure to see you again, dear. Was everything up to scratch?” Joan asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
“And I’m so sorry about young Harry, so tragic.”
“Me too.”
“Cuppa tea love?” A voice came from the kitchen.
“Yes, please,” Joan replied, “do you want one, Amelia?”
“No, thank you. Sorry, I need to get going.”
“No worries, love.”
I stood at the front door for a minute and saw Joan’s husband bring her the cup of tea he had promised. If I had been asked a few months ago if I wanted that to be my life in the future, I would have laughed my head off. But now Harry was gone, I would trade anything for the possibility. As much as I despised this place, I would give up my life now for the chance of spending my twilight years with my husband, like Joan was. I could taste the bitter tang of jealousy on my tongue. Joan and her husband were some of the nicest people you could ever meet, but it didn’t stop me from feeling intense envy. I averted my eyes and walked outside. The polar opposite of wholesome Joan, Yvonne, was standing there with her lips glued to a cigarette and waiting for me to emerge.
“Leaving so soon?” She asked.
“Yes, I’ve got to get back.”
“You can stay at ours for a few days, you know? Get your head together?”
“I think it’s going to take more than a few days.”
Yvonne extinguished her cigarette against the garden wall and took a few steps closer to me. I didn’t know if she had been drinking again or if it was just last night’s booze I could smell on her clothes and breath. She was definitely struggling to walk in a straight line, though, which wasn’t all that unusual for her, thinking about it.
“You can always pick up the phone for a chat. If you need to talk to someone,” She offered.
“I’m sorry, Yvonne, but why would I do that? You’ve never liked me.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is,” I insisted.
“Yes, we haven’t got on in the past. But I know exactly how you are feeling. Harry would have wanted us to get along.”
“I don’t think he would care.”
“Of course, he would. It breaks my heart knowing what you are going through. I went through it, too.”
She didn’t know how I was feeling, and I resented the comparison of her situation to my own. I knew every sordid detail of their family dynamic when Harry was growing up. His father, Paul, desperately tried to hold their family together whilst Yvonne went out drinking and sleeping around. Paul pretended not to know what was going on, but in fact, he did. That’s why he did what Yvonne had been trying to do for years: drink himself to death. I didn’t know what Yvonne’s game plan with me was, but I was looking forward to not having to deal with her again. I even toyed with the idea of telling her exactly what I thought of her, but I decided it would be in bad taste. I found it almost unbelievable that Harry had become such a well-rounded adult after his tumultuous upbringing. I could have told her some home truths and burnt those bridges forever, but Harry would have thought it was cruel. I simply faked a smile and brushed my way past her with my suitcase in hand.
“Are you not even going to at least say goodbye?” She asked.
“Goodbye, Yvonne.”
I threw my suitcase in the back of my car and got in. Yvonne was already lighting another cigarette before I got the engine started. Once the cigarette was lit, she began clumsily strolling down the promenade. I fervently hoped it would be the last time I ever saw her. I’d tolerated her for so long, but there wasn’t anything holding me back anymore. I had no intention of taking her up on her offer of a chat. She would only use it as an excuse to belittle me. I saw through her overused ‘I know how you feel’ routine. I loved and honoured my husband, and she would never know what that is like.
It was a good three-hour journey back to Manchester; I’d always hated driving long distances on my own. Harry and I used to take these little road trips when we first met, driving down to Bristol for the day or up to Blackpool for the fish and chips. We were so free-spirited back then; we barely planned a thing and just went wherever the mood took us. I knew I’d never take one of those trips with him ever again, and I cried almost the whole way home. I didn’t know how I was going to survive without him by my side.
I stood at our front door. I put the key in the lock, but I couldn’t physically turn it. I needed to prepare myself; the house was full of reminders and memories of Harry, and I was petrified of my own reaction to seeing them. After a few minutes of reflection and deep breathing, I turned the key. The house was so eerily quiet that front door creaking as it opened almost shocked me. I don’t think I’d ever heard it before. It was somehow colder without him here; all colours had faded to grey by his absence. I abandoned my suitcase at the bottom of the stairs and dragged myself into the kitchen.
We had a speaker plugged into the wall, and Harry had an old MP3 player that he always left connected to it. I’d always hated his taste in music. To wind me up, he would be playing cheesy rock classics all hours of the day. I pressed play; it was still halfway through a song from the last time Harry had listened to it. I slumped down onto the kitchen floor, listening to the music I claimed to hate for years, but it was so comforting to hear it again. It made me fantasise Harry was just in the next room, cooking dinner or working from home. I took out my phone to make my daily call; it had become a ritual of mine every time I returned home.
“Hi, this is Harry. I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message,” the phone played.
Just hearing his voice again was just enough to keep me going, at first for a few hours, but I’d begun to become immune to its effects. I’d called his phone every day for the last two weeks since his death. It had been recovered by the police, but the phone itself was smashed to pieces. Harry’s number was still active. I didn’t have the time or inclination to cancel it. It remained as a ghost, a piece of Harry that I could summon with a tap of my phone. I knew it was an unhealthy habit, but I couldn’t help myself. I could feel it slowly becoming an addiction. One day, I knew I was going to ring his number, and I wouldn’t hear his voice. It would be like losing him all over again. The short-lived respite from misery had faded, and I was alone again, a pathetic bag of emotions languishing on the kitchen floor. I called him again and again. I was desperate to avoid actually dealing with the grief and the endless stream of emotions that came with it.
It wasn’t just the emotional side I was ignoring. There was also a mountain of paperwork to go through. The sheer number of ridiculous things you need to sort out after losing someone you love is torturous. The paperwork and letters lay stacked on the kitchen counter island. Whenever I imagined the sheer mundanity of sorting through them, it filled me with dread. Under normal circumstances, I was a planner, and I constantly had a plan in place for everything in my life. But, for the first time, I was adrift. I had no idea what to do next and no clue where I was going. In a way, Harry had spoiled me with years of looking after every facet of our lives. There was even talk about me giving up my job at the pharmacy. I’d always been fiercely independent, and I was reluctant to give it up. Harry thought that if I went into early retirement, our chances of conceiving would be more favourable. I touched my stomach gently; I wished I could have given him what he so desperately wanted whilst he was still here.
There must have been some alcohol in the house somewhere. Something to at least take the edge off. Anything. I urgently moved from cupboard to cupboard, searching, but there wasn’t a single drop. Harry had symbolically removed it all when we moved into our new home, and he was keen to abstain with me, too. I felt absolutely hopeless. Everything good in my life had vanished. I returned to the cold kitchen floor on my back, banging my head lightly against the ceramic tiles. Harry’s playlist had ended, and I was left there, broken and in silence.
This is exactly what I had feared my life would be like when I was younger: a spinster. I’d always struggled in relationships, mostly never making it past the first date. I never could put my finger on why they had ended before they even started. I just chalked it up to bad luck, but as I got into my thirties, the dating pool began to dwindle to almost nothing. I found myself rejecting almost everyone whom I met under the flimsiest of pretences. I had this primal need to find a partner quickly, but I was also terrified of wasting my time on a relationship that wouldn’t go anywhere.
When I met Harry, he changed that. He changed me. I first met him a few weeks after my 30th birthday. Before our paths crossed, I’d already convinced myself that love and marriage were just something other people had. As ridiculous as it sounds, and given my age at the time, I never thought it was on the cards for me. Despite my growing lack of hope, Harry bounded into my life and truly swept me off my feet. After years of loneliness, I’d become accustomed to being on my own, but once I had a taste of the good life, there wasn’t any feasible way I could go back. I never even had any friends to speak of. I’d devoted my life to Harry, turning down every social invite in favour of spending more time with him.
My period of reflection was interrupted by my phone violently vibrating on the countertop, and I strained to reach it.
I can see you have calmed down now. Are you ready to begin the journey to the truth about Harry?
I hadn’t calmed down. I was in a perpetual state of anxiety, dread, and rage. James clearly was in the wrong profession, but I needed to talk to someone, nonetheless. Anyone. Even this fraudster was using my grief as some kind of angle. I don’t know why I replied. In truth, it was either to just feel some kind of human interaction or to mess with him to make myself feel better. What he had said the night before was playing on my mind, too. If there was even a slender chance that he knew something about Harry’s death, I needed to find out exactly what it was.
